KNOT WHAT YOU BELIEVE

Had you even turned 20, Andrew, before you took to heart your church’s teachings on same-sex attraction? Before you took the rope in hand, snaked it up and over the beam, slipped the knotted noose around your neck? What could you know of death, of life? 

Researchers say that for many people, five minutes or less pass between their making the decision to end it all and making the attempt. Was yours a snap decision, made when you learned your mother had discovered your secret? Or had you been toying with the idea of suicide all along? I can imagine you worrying it like a loose tooth, pushing it back and forth in your mind as I did, weighing its merits as a way of reconciling your being gay with your strongly held religious beliefs.

Seductive, the idea that death would end the pain and torment, free you from never being good enough, from knowing that who you were at the very deepest level was flawed, dirty, sick, beyond redemption. Not that you didn’t try. Not that you didn’t pray. Not that you didn’t fast and flagellate yourself and exercise all you knew of faith. But God did not answer your prayers, relieve your suffering or take away your persistent attractions. And you got the message in countless ways from parents and peers, church and society, that same-sex desire is wrong, shameful, depraved. 

You learned to make the hangman’s noose in Royal Ambassadors, the Southern Baptist knock-off of the Boy Scouts. Did you approach knot-tying with the same fervor you brought to religion? Did you do it well enough that yours was a quick death? From what I read, it’s easy to bungle hanging oneself. The resultant death by strangulation can be excruciating. Three months ago in Oregon an openly gay 15-year-old who'd complained of being bullied hung himself on the school playground. He died two weeks later, after being taken off life support. I can’t imagine his parents’ pain. Nor his. Nor yours.

I remember mine. Morning of my 35th birthday I wrote a suicide note to my wife and young sons. I had a plan. Had tested it. Knew it would work. I’d had all I could take. Believed my death would be best for my wife and children. Soon as they left for town, I was going to take my leave, as well. Like you, I could in no way reconcile my religious beliefs with who I had discovered myself to be.

You directed your last prayer heavenward. “What did I do that was so wrong?” you cried in anguish, tears wetting your face. “Why can’t you love me?” Then you turned and took up the long white rope.

Although I didn't see you die, I did hear your mother's scream when she found your body. The entire theatre audience did. Many of us sat there in silence, stunned. Some of us wiped our eyes. We grieved your death—you who only ever lived in our imaginations. 

You’re a fictional character, Andrew. In a play. You die every time Dell Shore’s Southern Baptist Sissies is presented. Though you’re a work of fiction, you’re an all too real stand-in for LGBTQ youth across this country, across this world, who every day face disparaging messages from friends, family, religious systems and societal institutions.

Suicide isn’t the answer. Killing yourself resolves nothing. If it’s death we need, it’s the death of small thinking, entrenched prejudice, bigotry and hatred. And it’s happening all around us, due to quite natural causes. Even conservative pundit George Will sees it. “Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying,” he told ABC television’s “This Week.” “It’s old people.” 

Younger people support gay and lesbian equality in far greater numbers than do their elders. Change is coming, Andrew. A new wind is blowing. I wish you were here to experience it.


This essay appeared in the April issue of The Community Letter

AN OPEN LETTER TO MY NIECE ON HER COMING OUT

My dear woman,

You can't imagine the excitement with which your coming out letter was read aloud in our house. Or maybe you can, you who received the cheers of your church youth group when they got the news. We're excited. Not because there's strength in numbers (there is) and one more lgbtiq person has joined the family (you have), but because the benefits of your living out of self-awareness are many, and we’ll all feel them: you, your immediate family, these two uncles of yours, those in your circles of influence.

May you go far. I spent years flailing in repression and denial, trying to move forward through life. I might as well have been swimming the 100-meter breast stroke in mud. How much further and faster you’ll progress buoyed by self-awareness and self-knowledge, carried forward by a societal current moving towards inclusion. The impact of the decisions you'll make, of the support, advocacy, love and nurturing you'll offer the world will be amplified many times over. 

Holy ground, this coming out. Sacred space, the paths by which we come to know ourselves and share who we are—the stuff we are made of—with others.

Not that being aware, not that being out will free you from hardship, heartache, despair. Life will bring these your way no matter what. But you will be better prepared to meet the challenges head-on, with eyes open.

Your coming out reminds me how far we as a society have progressed and how far we have to go. I was 35 when I came out. In 1995, 22 states had laws on the book that made of us criminals, that defined our expressions of physical intimacy as illegal acts. Mainline religious bodies condemned us to hell. True, the American Psychological Association had removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses while I was in high school, yet my wife readily secured the services of a counselor with a reputation for turning gay men straight, and a medical practitioner who claimed to be able to do the same. Didn’t work.

Soon after I came out to my best friend, he approached the president of the small evangelical Christian liberal arts university where I was employed. “Did you know you have a gay man on your staff?” my friend asked.

“Stop right there,” said the college president. “I don’t want to hear any more.” I was grateful for his unwillingness to discuss the matter. 

Yet look who’s talking now.

Two days before your letter arrived in our mailbox, the president of these United States referenced the gay rights movement in his second inaugural address. He enfolded it into the larger American story of the struggle for human rights, referencing in one breath Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall. President Obama rattled some cages when he said, “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law; for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

To hear our struggle given voice, our journey made visible, our lives accorded value, all from so elevated a platform—what a launching pad for your coming out. You’ll not be swimming in mud, girl.

All the same, you’ll face some people who will sling dirt your way. Last night, on a long drive home, your Uncle Dave flipped through radio channels. He listened in on a long harrangue about the evils of homosexuality and the subversive influence of gay people. Such voices still pepper our airwaves. May their words not lodge in your heart.

By countless acts of courage and resolve—undertaken in love, anger, sorrow and joy—lgbt pioneers made it possible for all of us who have followed to witness and work for an ever-rising tide of acceptance and appreciation, to continue to call for change. I’m so excited to cheer you on in this journey, to wonder what chapters you and your generation will add to this ongoing story. With your coming out letter you’ve turned the first page.

With love to you, from your

Uncle Bryn

MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH IN SOUTHERN BAPTIST SISSIES

MUNCIE, IN—Southern Baptist Sissies, written by Del Shores and directed by Robby Tompkins, continues its run at Muncie Civic Theatre’s studio space through March 2. The show left me winded. I’m trying to understand its impact on me by writing about it. Too, I grasp at some way to say thank you for the ways theater can illuminate, quicken and confound. I mean these words to convey some sense of my gratitude.

SPOILER ALERT: These ruminations assume you’ve seen the show, and make little effort to conceal plot denouement.




Matters of Life and Death in Southern Baptist Sissies

I've been there, been there in the church when the preacher stands over the closed coffin and says, "We ask ourselves the why question—"why?"—over and over again. His death leaves us with a great sadness and a great many questions. We don't know why he chose to take his own life."

In that moment I wanted to stand up and shout. "Like hell we don't! Some of us have a pretty damn good idea why.” But I kept my mouth shut. I am well-schooled in repression.

We had known each other a long time, the deceased and I. We were not confidantes; we shared more in common than we were willing to admit, even to ourselves. We used denial, repression and self-induced unawareness to shield ourselves from self-knowledge.

Some of his story I pieced together after the fact, some of this is conjecture. I can't know with certainty what was going on inside him. Yet I've lived enough of his story to make an educated guess. He grew up in a church, family and society that told him in a thousand ways, "A man shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination." In a small town where everyone knew everyone else's business, he hid as best he could. He prayed, believed, served church and community. Thought it would go away. Hoped it was a phase. Tried to accept it as his cross to bear, the dark angel he had to wrestle to win his way to heaven. Deep down he hated himself. Hated how and who and what he was. Hated the constant struggle. Lived in fear of anyone ever finding out. And then someone did. His secret uncovered. About to be made public. How could he go on? He knew what awaited. He'd seen it before, most recently, in my case: drummed out of town, marriage up in smoke, career terminated, kicked out of the church, left friendless and alone.

He must have panicked. It happened so suddenly, so irrevocably—the discovery, threatened exposure, fateful decision. Did he talk to anyone first? Wish he would have called me. Wish I’d have known to call him. I heard the report on the local news. His body had been found. Damn, damn, damn.

This is where you take me, David W., in your portrayal of the Preacher, presiding at the funeral of the beautiful boy with the deep soul. You look out over the congregation, your face troubled. How can your perplexity be genuine? Yet you almost convince me it is.

 “We ask ourselves the question ‘why?’ over and over again,” you say.

No closed coffin in front of the pulpit, just his framed photo in the center of a funereal wreath. And now what happens? Did you bump against it, knock your pulpit against the easel? For whatever reason, his picture falls face forward onto the floor. By your reaction I can tell this isn’t in the script. A moment’s hesitation and you go on with your sermonizing as if you haven’t witnessed his fall, as if nothing has gone awry. “A troubled young life is gone, and we ask ourselves why….”

Damn you, Preacher. Damn the unfeeling religious system you serve. Damn the ways you represent my own unseeing, unthinking, unfeeling responses to others. Another beautiful life ended, yet another deep soul sacrificed on the altar of power, tradition, institutionalized bigotry and willful ignorance. The accidental tumble his photo takes only echoes and underscores the insidious evil done daily in the name of fundamentalist religious belief. Another one bites the dust and so what. Who cares. Who even deigns notice.

THE NAKED TRUTH IN SOUTHERN BAPTIST SISSIES

MUNCIE, IN—Southern Baptist Sissies, written by Del Shores and directed by Robby Tompkins, continues its run at Muncie Civic Theatre’s studio space through March 2. The show left me winded. I’m trying to understand its impact on me by writing about it. Too, I grasp at some way to say thank you for the ways theater can illuminate, quicken and confound. I mean these words to convey some sense of my gratitude.

SPOILER ALERT: These ruminations assume you’ve seen the show, and make little effort to conceal plot denouement.




The Naked Truth: Nudity in Southern Baptist Sissies

In one of his poems (“To Cavafy,” in Turtle, Swan, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), Mark Doty descries five boys on a small raft anchored in a pond. Each maintains a careful distance from the others. They stand looking at the water, the far banks, the setting sun, engaging in laconic conversations. Watching from shore, Doty and his companion fix their attention on one of the taller high-school boys. He stands wet and gleaming, splendid in the slanting light, unaware of his audience. Doty writes,

Of course we wanted him,
but more than that—we have
each other’s bodies, better
because they are familiar.
We wanted to enter the way
he dove unselfconsciously

from the little dock,
certain, the diver
become pure form, the exact shape
for parting water.

This my husband and me, our shore the second row of seats in Studio Theatre, our focus the four young men who open the play with an enthusiastic rendition of an old gospel hymn. We take in the details. Handsome actors. Thin, fit. Ethan L.’s expressive eyes, hair dark brown and curly. Matthew B., black hair, heavy brows, slight build, erect posture. Chandler C., bright button eyes, pencil waist. Jake R., long in both body and face, the latter a playground of emotions. Each a study in black and white: black trousers, long-sleeved white dress shirt, thin solid-colored tie. Of course we wanted them.

Engaging to see them dive into their roles, later surface in various states of undress in service of their art. Enthralling to be caught up in the characters they portray, witness the marriage of teller and story. Chandler’s T.J. rolls words around in his mouth like a cough drop before spitting them out. He swallows often. Ends sentences with his lips tightly sealed. How much T.J. holds inside, must keep pressed and repressed. We watch as he is baptized along with his friend Mark (Ethan L.). Afterwards, the two boys towel off and change back into their Sunday clothes. T.J. strips naked, bare butt to the audience. Afforded a full-frontal view of his friend, Mark goes tongue-tied; his hormones hit Mach 1. Thus we witness an early link in the chain of events that charts the course of their lives, changes the nature of the two friends’ relationship. Credit the director and actors for giving this scene its due.

And other scenes likewise. A look at two of the boys engaged in celebratory mutual masturbation is juxtaposed with the Preacher’s spouting dire warnings to a third. The clergyman rails on about the dangers of temptation, of riding the devil’s merry-go-round of sin, about what happens when one gets off. Upstage, Mark and T.J. are doing just that. The scene—incorporating nudity—addresses on many levels the native strength of sexual desire and the power of religious and societal forces marshaled to constrain it. The Preacher prays with Andrew, “Please release us….” Indeed.

Not every player is able or willing to meet the playwright’s demands for physical exposure. No judgment from this quarter; we are all human and every actor an amalgam of real-live person and embodied character. As Andrew, Jake R. readily makes himself emotionally vulnerable to his audience. His face becomes a screen; an array of feelings play across it: excitement, joy, naivete, eagerness to please, sincerity of purpose, longing, physical attraction and desire, ache, shame, fear, grief, despair. Yet the actor refuses to follow his character’s lead in a pivotal scene that calls for physical intimacy. Alone in his room, Andrew strips to his boxers and masturbates to images in an issue of Playgirl. Except he doesn’t. Not in this production. This Andrew holds the magazine and touches himself circumspectly above the waist. I am not surprised to later learn he is the youngest member of the cast. Everything in its time. Kudos for venturing as far as he does.

After all, the play calls us to live within our limits. To go home, look into the mirror, and learn to love what we see there. To venture on a quest of self-discovery, to speak truth first to our inmost selves, then to those in power. Are we to speak the naked truth? Yes, insofar as we are able.

WISDOM FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY IN SOUTHERN BAPTIST SISSIES

MUNCIE, IN—Southern Baptist Sissies, written by Del Shores and directed by Robby Tompkins, continues its run at Muncie Civic Theatre’s studio space through March 2. The show left me winded. I’m trying to understand its impact on me by writing about it. Too, I grasp at some way to say thank you for the ways theater can illuminate, quicken and confound. I mean these words to convey some sense of my gratitude.

SPOILER ALERT: These ruminations assume you’ve seen the show, and make little effort to conceal plot denouement.




Wisdom from the Peanut Gallery: What to Look At from Southern Baptist Sissies

While serving as a comic foil to the angst and turmoil amongst the four leads, barflies Preston “Peanut” LeRoy and Odette Annette Barnett pepper their one-liners with telling observations about life. Cheryl Crowder’s Odette is a hoot, referring to one unfortunate incident after another, none of which she cares to discuss in any detail. She knows what she is—and what she is not. “Oh honey, I’m not a lesbian,” she tells her newfound friend and drinking partner Peanut, “I’m an alcoholic.” All through the play she’s eying men in the gay bar, struck by this and that one’s resemblance to a person she once knew. Only towards the end does she reveal the object of her search—her brother Buddy whom she kicked out of the house over his being gay. She breaks down over her betrayal of him.

As Peanut, the diminutive Bryan Hamilton has been playing the role of the aging queen for laughs. Now he grows quite serious, speaks truth to his friend: “Look around you, Odette. All these boys are Buddy. All these troubled young men. They’re all Buddy.”

Odette takes her leave. She’ll move onto another gay bar in her continued quest to to find her brother, make amends. She studies a young man standing in the shadows who resembles the Buddy she once knew and loved. It’s Andrew, feeling conflicted over his escapades at the bar tonight, caught between longing and loathing. His religion tells him one thing, his desires another. The divinity he worships hates him and his kind. Everything he wants is wrong, everything he touches doomed. Odette steps over and kisses him on the cheek. He startles, stares, silently touches his cheek long after she walks away. Can anyone truly love him as he is?

Peanut rouses him from his reverie. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m not a hustler,” Andrew replies.

“That’s alright, I’m not looking to buy sex, not tonight,” Peanut says. He studies the youth, then offers a devastating self-critique. “Don’t become like me, Andrew.” Then he extends a pearl of great price: “When you go home tonight take a look in the mirror and learn to love what you see.”

Look in the mirror and learn to love what you see. Good advice for any troubled young gay man. For any of us. For you. For me. And what’s more, I don’t have to wait until I go home to look in a mirror. The play shows me my own reflection. It’s not always pretty.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS: SEEING MYSELF IN SOUTHERN BAPTIST SISSIES

MUNCIE, IN—Southern Baptist Sissies, written by Del Shores and directed by Robby Tompkins, continues its run at Muncie Civic Theatre’s studio space through March 2. The show left me winded. I’m trying to understand its impact on me by writing about it. Too, I grasp at some way to say thank you for the ways theater can illuminate, quicken and confound. I mean these words to convey some sense of my gratitude.

SPOILER ALERT: These ruminations assume you’ve seen the show, and make little effort to conceal plot denouement.  




Smoke and Mirrors: Seeing Myself in Southern Baptist Sissies

At the intermission I chat with the woman seated near me. “How’s the play for you?”

“Interesting,” she says. “I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never seen it before. How is it for you?”

“Personal. I see myself in nearly every one of these characters,” I tell her.

“Oh, really?” she says. (What else does one say to a stranger who threatens to self-disclose?)

I spared her the details, You, I’ll tell.

I see myself in Ethan Litt’s portrayal of Mark stuffing his rage and hate. What to do with the beast that eats the heart? How to release the pent-up anger without causing damage? Mark unnerves me in the opening scene—by his use of profanity in church, caustic commentary, willingness to give the religious authority the finger. Later he hurls a Bible across the room. I don’t like to see the way repressed anger shoots out sideways. At the same time, Mark embodies many of the traits he despises in the Preacher: bombastic style, rigid thinking, preening self-assurance. This portrait hits too close to home for my liking. This mirror’s reflection is less than flattering.

In the role of T.J., Chandler Chastain holds a magnifying glass to blemishes in my own character. With intense gaze, pointed looks and earnest tones he portrays a version of me I recognize with a shudder: the very sincere, sober, serious know-it-all; the self-righteous, Bible-toting, Bible-quoting boor. Vestiges of that person linger on within me yet.

I hardly need a mirror to see myself many times over in Andrew’s whole-hearted embrace of religion. He so badly wants to be good. He’s so ready to believe, so willing to accept the authority of the church in matters of the soul. Andrew is baptized at eight years old; I was five. Jake Rura plays up Andrew’s energy and enthusiasm, his open-hearted sincerity—we could be brothers. I hear my former self praying in his cries of anguish, see embodied my past life as he bends his lanky frame in self-recrimination, lets acid guilt roil in his gut.

It’s more of a stretch for me to see myself in Benny. In Mathhew Bettencourt’s portrayal, Benny is not the stereotypical drag queen, catty, acerbic, strong-willed, determined. He is neither flamboyant nor affected, but gentle and kind. He makes his own way in a world that wants little to do with him. Doing drag allows him to come into his own, express his inner self, live into his power and self-assurance. Like me, Benny performs better when given a role to play. Something paradoxical about it, I know—playing a role sometimes allows one to become more truly oneself. I’ve been there, have experienced the magic. Been labeled atypical, too. Duck stereotypes when I can.

A brief glance in the mirrors held up by other characters:

Mothers (Molly Casey): Well-meaning and misguided. Check. Willing to hand over personal authority to the powers that be in the church. Check.

Preacher (David Whicker): Passing on what he was taught, blind to the impact of what he’s saying, so sure he’s right. Check, check and check.

Brother Chaffey (Cody Ricks): Latent. Hoo yeah.

Preston “Peanut” LeRoy (Bryan Hamilton): Tired aging queen. Sounds familiar.

Odette Annette Barnett (Cheryl Crowder): Flawed. Funny. Good heart. Check.

Johnny Handcock (John “J.P.” Bechtel III): Exotic dancer, well-built, shapely. OK, so maybe I don’t see myself in every character….

Ensemble (Andrew Dalton): According to his cast bio, performing in his first show EVER. Therefore, brave, daring, venturesome. Check.

Ensemble (Kodie Egenolf): Doubles as assistant director. Therefore, hard-working and probably under-appreciated. Check.

Announcer (Sid Ullrich): Mouthy. Check.

Writer Beware

I note a link to my blog appears on a dubious blog promoting a company making big promises about the big money to be made by writers, a company that gets poor reviews and low ratings by online evaluators. Please note I have nothing to do with any money-making scheme or scam. Look before you leap.